Elemental Review: A Decent Return To Form For Pixar's Originality

In some ways, Pixar's biggest enemy is Pixar itself. Over nearly 30 years, Pixar Animation Studios has upended the future of feature animation not only through its cutting-edge computer technology but through its manner of storytelling. When the studio's first feature, "Toy Story," was released in 1995, it felt like a breath of fresh air after years of the standard-bearer, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and its Broadway-influenced style of telling classic fairy tales and fables with a musical twist. 

What Pixar offered was a mismatched-buddy comedy that transplanted aspects of the human element and how our world operates into a world of non-human characters. And over time, that formula is one that Pixar not only established but has hewed to over and over, in films featuring bugs, monsters, fish, the emotions existing inside a person's mind, and the souls of those in the afterlife. The latter two examples, "Inside Out" and "Soul", highlight (perhaps unintentionally) how hard it's becoming for Pixar to adopt the same formula over time. The same is true of the largely charming but still somewhat limited "Elemental," in which the mismatched buddies not only fall in love with each other but are also anthropomorphized elements of our living world.

"Elemental" is set in Element City, in which communities of people made of air, water, and earth have thrived for generations. But the film, directed by Peter Sohn, is framed partially as a riff on an immigrant story, as we see the first fire people — named Bernie (voiced by Ronnie del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi) by a well-meaning but confused customs officer — arrive in Element City to make a life for themselves after leaving their home behind. Over time, other fire people join Bernie and Cinder, whose daughter Ember (Leah Lewis) is eventually expected to take over their shop the Fireplace. But the rest of Element City seems mostly unwelcoming to fire people (the phrase "Go back to Fireland" is uttered at least once here), with the exception of a doofy and emotional water person named Wade (Mamoudou Athie), who connects with the temperamental Ember in spite of them being ... well, you know, fire and water. 

If there's any great sense of how Pixar has become its worst enemy, it's in watching some of the setup scenes of "Elemental," which seem like they want to stand on their own two feet but are unavoidably similar to other Pixar films (or other animated films that are seemingly inspired by Pixar). The early montage making clear how Element City is established, with different communities dedicated to air, water, and earth, recalls a similar sequence in Disney's 2016 film "Zootopia" as its lead character first enters the eponymous city and its various ecosystem-based communities. 

When Ember tries to reverse a safety decision Wade makes (before instantly regretting it) and has to journey to City Hall, it recalls the moment in "Coco" when Miguel explores the bureaucracy of The Land of the Dead and tries to get back home. Some of the similarity does seem to be self-deprecating in "Elemental": Pixar films are also well-known for being tearjerking, so a good number of the gags about Wade, who's prone to crying, and his family, which plays something called The Crying Game at dinner to see who won't cry, feel slyly self-mocking.

"Elemental" is not the first Pixar film to feature mismatched buddies who are male and female, nor is it the first with some level of romance involved. But the film, written by John Hoberg, Kat Likkel, and Brenda Hsueh, does try to foreground what ends up being a very tentative romance. It's not just that Ember and Wade are opposites in terms of how they present their emotional states. (If you use "Inside Out" as the corollary, it's like Anger and Sadness falling in love.) It's that the romance is used to bring in an only sometimes effective commentary on mixed-race relationships — Bernie is portrayed as being very stridently anti-water, and a member of Wade's family compliments Ember on how clearly she speaks the language. Leah Lewis (from the CW version of "Nancy Drew") and Mamoudou Athie (from last year's "Jurassic World: Dominion") do a very good job of bringing their characters to life, even if the dialogue isn't always as crisp as you'd like and even when the social commentary fails to be quite as complex as it should be. (There, too, are shades of "Zootopia".)

"Elemental" excels in the same place where Pixar films often excel (including in Sohn's last effort, "The Good Dinosaur"): with animation. Before he directed features, Sohn also directed the short "Partly Cloudy," so he seems quite comfortable in directing a film full of characters who feel like they belong in the world of that short film. The blend of how the element-based characters are animated — approaching something quirkily hand-drawn — with the depth and textures of Element City itself is often remarkable. One key emotional scene between Wade and Ember, in which he enables her to see a fabled tree she'd tried and failed to view in person as a child, is mostly dialogue-free and works wonders because the character and set animation are immensely satisfying and captivating.

That said, the scene's climax recalls nothing less than one of Pixar's best sequences in one of their best films: the "Define dancing" moment in "WALL-E". And that, in and of itself, highlights the eventual limitations in "Elemental." On one hand, it's a good thing that this movie not only exists but is being released in theaters instead of kicked straight to streaming. (Another notable connection between "Elemental" and "WALL-E" is that each film boasts few recognizable actors in its cast, and the few truly well-known names here, including Catherine O'Hara, have only a handful of lines of dialogue.) Here is an original Pixar film, and one driven in front of and behind the camera by people of color. It's a good thing that "Elemental" is here, and the movie is much better than most of Pixar's late-stage sequels. But there is still a notable formula here. At one time, Pixar shook up the animation world by offering a new creative way forward. But now they're the standard-bearer. They might need to shake things up, and soon.

Note: "Elemental" is preceded by a new Pixar short, "Carl's Date." And yes, that does refer to Carl Fredrickson of the brilliant "Up," as he has his dog Dug help him prepare for his first date with an unseen woman. It's cute enough (even if you might wonder if Carl ever would want to date someone after the passing of his wife Ellie), though it's primarily fascinating because the late Ed Asner may have more dialogue here than he did in "Up".

/Film Rating: 7 out of 10